


Square Peg Round Hole

by phansomedevil



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Pining, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-12 22:31:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5683357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phansomedevil/pseuds/phansomedevil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan learns an important lesson from the elusive boy across the hall: Something that isn't quite love can still break your heart.</p><p>"You’ve always been a good actor, and somehow you’ve found yourself studying law, but acting is like lawyering, kind of, so eventually you build up a pretty solid case for Phil being a square peg and you being a round hole. You convince everyone the two of you don’t fit, even yourself."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Square Peg Round Hole

It happens like this—unexpectedly. Your high school girlfriend breaks up with you two weeks after graduation. You tell people it was mutual, people being your mum and the couple of friends you win in the settlement, but really you’re still in love with her and she’s the one who had to go across the country and experience “The Uni Life.” She says it’s the best decision for the both of you, as the other option is, what, getting married, and clearly that’s out of the question. She’s crying when she tells you, which satisfies the reptile part of your brain that wants to take the people that hurt you and hurt them back. But she still looks pretty, and you still love her, so you want more than anything to brush tear-damp strands of hair from her eyes. 

Phil is a blue-eyed, friendly boy who lives two doors down. In the frantic rush to be not alone in your shared residence hall, you bond over video games and bands that were most popular in 2008. It’s not long before everyone on the floor lumps you guys together, based mostly on your twin emo fringes. People regularly mix up your names those first few weeks, but you don’t get it. You’re some kid from Wokingham—a lightweight loser with a broken heart. Phil is, well—Phil was an extra in a low-budget Viking comedy; Phil’s got family in America, and he once rode Rock n’ Roll Rollercoaster twelve times in an afternoon; Phil took a gap year and shot hours of footage on a camera he won from cereal box tabs. Phil’s so clumsy that you’re afraid one day he’ll put his head through the ceramic tiles in the communal bathroom. But he’s brilliant and kind and everything you doubt you could ever be. He’s your friend.

It happens like this—gradually. You’re up late studying in the common room, thinking about Phil behind his closed door barely fifteen meters away. He’s probably sleeping, though you can’t be sure. Another friend, of course there are others, asks you how to ask out a girl. You don’t really know how useful you can be here, as your ex cornered you in the cafeteria and asked you to prom. You miss her, you haven’t talked, but the sting has been dulled by something new—a spark so tenuous you can’t be afraid of it, but warm enough that it feels worth saying. You think you have a crush on Phil. It definitely must fall within the boundaries of “crush,” this way you miss him when he stays too late in the library, this way moving feels criminal when he falls asleep on your shoulder, this way you can’t help but stare when he’s got a towel around his waist and rivulets streaming down his back. You were never narrow, always straight, but it seems the spark was just waiting for you to voice it, and soon you can’t believe you were ever under that impression. Straight guys don’t let hugs linger this long. They definitely don’t spend those hugs deeply inhaling their friend’s pine-scented body wash. 

You don't plan to do anything about it—this unprecedented, distracting little thing—but you start wondering. Even though Phil's got something like twelve posters of Sarah Michelle Geller papered over his concrete walls, he's also been known to hum when one of their floor mates mentions this or that fit actor. Whether that’s in acknowledgement, agreement, or appreciation, neither you nor anyone else can tell. You spend a lot of time in physical contact, hugging and cuddling and hair petting, more than you did with your ex. Phil’s touchy with everyone, but you have good reason to think you’re his favorite, considering half the floor thinks you’re together. You enjoy these rumors, privately, while Phil continues to be his private self, which of course you have to respect. Still, you really wish you had a few more data points when the little thing takes over your life. After all, straight guys don’t get heart palpitations after being separated from their fellow heter-bro for more than eight hours. But you’re really not straight, and you finally confess. It’s scarier than almost getting fired at A&E for selling an ax to a child and scarier than playing Benvolio for a full auditorium and your to-be girlfriend. It’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done. He turns you down flat. 

It happens like this—stupidly. You’re at a post-finals holiday party with some floor friends, most importantly Phil, which must mean things are getting back to normal. You really should be past it, but it’s your first time getting well and truly drunk since you’ve been legally allowed. So it becomes your night’s mission to make sure Phil knows exactly how attractive he is. Because you’re seriously more attracted to him than you’ve been to anyone else, at least in real life. Your ex is no exception, though Jennifer Lawrence may be; you’re still working out the details. You don’t understand it, so you take stock of Phil's features: longish black hair, two blue-yellow-green eyes, bowed pink lips, straight teeth, hooked nose, ill-defined chin, very defined cheekbones, broad shoulders, soft stomach, narrow hips, big feet, thin fingers. But all of those details fail to describe the way Phil's eyes twinkle when he’s about to tell you a truly awful joke, or how Phil's tongue peeks out the corner of his grin when he’s about to best you at Mario Kart, or how Phil's hair tickles when he avoids homework by burrowing into your neck. 

You want to tell Phil he's some unholy combination of adorable and sexy and the most beautiful person you've ever known. But you're pissed off your ass. So you burp up vodka and cherry coke and all that comes out is about two-dozen variations on "you're so fucking hot." The friend who eventually cuts you off underestimates the gravity of the situation. Because without really thinking about it, or perhaps after thinking about it near nonstop for months, you're grabbing Phil's face and planting your lips on his. You kiss Phil for two long, glorious seconds. Second number two is more glorious by far, because that’s when you swear he starts to kiss you back. The next morning, you roll over and groan and wish you had been just a little bit drunker, so you wouldn’t have to relive the mortification now. You rack your mind, but you can’t remember if you made him blush. 

It happens like this—backwards. You talk to him about it, but only haltingly, roundaboutly, out of necessity. It’s necessary to be normal, to keep steady the untested boat of your new friendships, and to keep him. You practice normality. You think about him with his grandma, hopping into skinny jeans, nose-deep in a plate of BBQ wings. When you can’t sleep, you push him out of your spank bank with a revolving picture show of scrunched-up faces and warm orifices and hissed words of wanting. You stumble hung-over onto the lounge sofa, letting yourself sit next to him with curling hair and yogurt-stained sweatpants. Phil comfortably discusses bowel movements in your company, so clearly a little morning breath is fair game. Tenderly, you collect a million reasons why you and him would never work, from his indefatigably sunny demeanor to his snack thievery. You’ve always been a good actor, and somehow you’ve found yourself studying law, but acting is like lawyering, kind of, so eventually you build up a pretty solid case for Phil being a square peg and you being a round hole. You convince everyone the two of you don’t fit, even yourself. 

So you’re friends. Friends talk about things like bowel movements and other girls. There are other girls, more so for you than Phil. He sticks close to his studies, enjoys them for some reason, and games on the weekend. Try though you do, you fail to sell him on your first year’s bizarre yet brilliant revelation: if you go out, plus or minus a few shots, there’s going to be someone willing to sleep with you. There are girls at parties and clubs, and eventually there are other guys. Usually they’re some combination of fair and light-eyed and dark-haired, a pattern your friends have fun pointing out at every opportunity. The night before an interview for a summer internship, you come home with a gorgeous brunette hanging off your neck. You’re fumbling with your keys, wondering how to ask her not to leave marks, when you hear Phil’s laugh from the lounge. A quick glance over her head shows him with a study partner, the pretty American exchange student from one of his cool-sounding film studies classes, a girl who wears stacks of jelly bracelets and insists on calling him “Philip.” She’s got her hand on his knee. The lock finally cooperates, and you don’t say much else to the girl after that. The next day, Phil asks if your cat got angry. You ask if he’s got a thing for Nineties Throwback slash Certified Anglophile girl. Apparently you did indeed witness a move, albeit a failed one. Barely glancing up from his heavily annotated textbook, Phil tells you he’s just not interested in her like that, and beneath all the sticky dislike, you feel a twinge of sympathy. 

It happens like this—in a whirlwind. You’ve moved out of freshers halls, but he still invites you two doors down, because that’s the closest housing you could afford without living together. You’re watching Sharknado 2 and drinking, not drunk, which seems like a crucial distinction. It’s late enough to trust that everyone else is sleeping, so you can’t be totally sure you’re awake when Phil brushes his lips over your fingertips. His breath is pure heat as he kisses them, one by one in a row of what can only be called kisses, but you don’t think the word qualifies when you know kissing, you’re good at kissing, but slow, dry lips have never made you tremble like you’re breaking. He just barely draws your ring finger into his mouth, but the burst of wetness shatters you entirely and the next second you’re kissing like only his air is worth breathing. You never realized that a better type of oxygen can be found when one body is pressed against another. Phil is that rare, right other, his palm braced on the small of your back, his hips stuttering against your clothed thigh. In between kisses, he tells you that nothing has changed from last year. This doesn’t mean—no, you reassure him, it doesn’t. You taste his lips and his neck and his chest, and promise: You wouldn’t want it to anyway. 

You don’t tell your friends, and you don’t fall in love. You’re not stupid enough to trust him with your heart, which you know is delicate and you’ve been told is valuable. But you give him other things over the next few months—your Friday nights, heady with possibility, more often than not disappointed, most often lonely; and your ego, boosted or bruised as easily as he responds to your 1 AM texts. You give him your firsts, nontraditional. Phil might be a virgin, or near it, hardly from lack of opportunity, but you’re laughably not. Though you’ve seen a decent portion of the drama club naked, you now become transfixed by a coin-sized bit of earthy skin just past Phil’s waistband, and devoted to the slightly darker spot on his inner thigh that makes him shiver. You’ve gagged on dick in a club bathroom stall, but it takes no time at all to acquire his taste; you swallow deep and lick him off your fingertips like simple syrup. It near beats the best sex you ever had and you haven’t even fucked. When he ducks his head to suggest it, flushed with almost scientific curiosity, your mind flat-lines. He has to repeat himself. The instant you believe, you want feverishly to make it good for him. You tell him how gorgeous he looks inside you. You repeat his name like a mantra. He doesn’t have to try, or say anything back, to put all your fantasies to shame; you fill in the blanks with his shaky breaths and cut-off moans. After he goes to bed, mumbling about some massive project deadline, you take a picture of his mark just below your collarbone, because pictures are easier to trust than memories. 

It ends like this—all at once. Exams are a week away and a dark cloud over your soul, but when he texts you answer. It’s that time: Friday night, early hours, housemates out, two shots in. Before heading over, you cut your fingernails and change your boxers, a just-in-case habit you’ve developed. You regret the fingernails later, when they’re pressed into your balled-up fists and you can’t feel a damn thing. There’s no physical pain to distract from Phil’s words. No matter the details, the point is that he doesn’t want to do this anymore. Hard stop. (No negotiations.) But you fixate on the details anyway—his voice regretful but firm, his gaze fixed on the dull beige carpet, his arm still warm against yours on his cramped sofa. His mouth is the leaky facet and your mind is the basin; you wait for each new word to drop and splatter into another thousand icy droplets. Maybe you should’ve seen this coming, but two minutes ago you had what you wanted, more or less, and so you forgot that the things you want are never yours to keep. He’s blindsided you. You could hate him for that, if you weren’t too busy hating yourself for oozing vulnerability. You ask why. 

He says he’s your friend, that’s the priority, that’s all he wants to be most of the time, that’s what gets muddled by that other stuff. It’s fun, but (you’re) not worth it and (you’re) not necessary. You aren’t in love with him, there never was a chance for that, but you want him even now. You want to make his heart beat fast and then press your ear to his chest so you can hear it. You want so fucking badly, even at this final confirmation that Phil would rather leave you, a million times over, than take you. You glance down at his lips once or twice, ashamed of even entertaining the thought that one more kiss could change his mind. When he squeezes your hand tight, a goodbye of sorts, you can’t stand the look on his face. There’s sympathy in it, real concern, but you’re not sure where the caring ends and the pity begins so in that moment his whole beautiful face makes your stomach turn. You don’t fight hard for this electrifying, infuriating, fucked-to-hell thing between you. He wants to surgically remove it, the wire framework of you and him, and you’re too terrified of total collapse to imagine what shape your relationship might take without it. Giving up feels like a betrayal of yourself, but what else can you do when he’s always held all the cards in your favorite game, a game he’s no longer interested in playing. You leave, laughing a little in his doorway, wondering if you’ll cry this time. He’s never broken up with anyone, but he’s a natural at it. 

It ends like this—never. You’re friends. Friends can pretend they never wanted each other and never did anything about it. You don’t have nearly enough time to prepare for this, the performance of your life, but you’re nothing if not a good actor. The other option is losing him and that’s no option at all. You hang out with other friends, try to concentrate on your studies, and join about a dozen clubs when your studies continue to be mind numbing. You know you’ll move on, as many times and with as many people as it takes to forget the softness of his lips and not regret your sepia-tinted memories. You make new memories, of girls and boys and wild, hollow nights. Your worst nightmare is this: Phil waits. He waits until you’re happy and hopeless, a friend, just that, a world of that. Then, it’s Friday night and two in the morning and he knocks on your door and raises his eyebrows in that way and looks at you with those eyes and lets you touch him and kiss him and fuck him and love him. You can take anything but that. Please not that.


End file.
